Author: Digital Tailors
Date: 11/07/2025
10 minute Read

If we were asked for our opinion, we would have to say that link building is the area where many businesses go wrong. We would even go so far as to say it’s one of the areas that many agencies also get wrong when implementing SEO.

Because of this, many people say that link building is no longer effective. Therefore, at this moment in time, you might be a little confused, perplexed and disoriented as to which areas of your digital marketing you should be working on?

However, as always, our team of Digital Tailors is here to help you to improve your organic search engine optimisation.

A quick history lesson

When Google was founded, Larry Page and Sergey Brin created its first algorithm, known as “PageRank”.

The reason we are going back in time is simple: Google’s original algorithm, PageRank, was highly reliant on backlinks as a way to decipher how to rank websites.

For those interested, it is said that the inspiration for PageRank was based on how someone might write and create a dissertation.

When you are at university, and you write a dissertation, you often have to cite your sources, perhaps using the Harvard referencing system.

This demonstrates that the work has been thoroughly researched and carefully compiled. Now, this allows you to begin to gain insight into how Google’s page rank works and the logic behind it.

That’s because back links are similar to referencing, just as you would if you were to referencing system when writing a dissertation.

Votes of confidence

Even since those very early days, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google, we can begin to understand the inner workings behind how Google’s algorithm worked.

What, put, the more links, the better the page ranked during the time Google was using PageRank. However, don’t take that concept quite literally today.

The reason is that more is better when it comes to link building in 2025.

Its now about link quality

Now, it’s more about quality. Building the right links, considering link velocity slowly building links, and establishing an excellent backlink profile can significantly help improve your business’s organic search engine optimisation.

Gaming the system

In 2009, Google removed PageRank scores from its Webmaster Tools. We believe, and many other SEO agencies also think the same, as the businesses got carried away with building more and more back links. Business got obsessed, thinkin that more is better!

This becomes somewhat of an obsession, with actual pages being set up to send links to other websites. These were often referred to “link farms”.

Link farms and other highly black-hat, spammy link-building methods are intended solely to increase the number of backlinks sent to another business.

Therefore this is a black hat method of SEO and shouldn’t be used.

However, this does not benefit the shopper who wants to find an answer to their query, it’s merely a method to try and manipulate search engine results, such as on Google, into ranking the page higher than it deserves to be.

We believe that around this time in 2009, when Google made the conscious decision to remove Page Rank from Webmaster Tools, marked the beginning of Google’s message to focus less on link quantity and more on quality.

Therefore an emphasis was made to concentrate on other performance metrics, such lowering bounce rates, and focus on writing high-quality content marketing for example.

Links as votes

As you read various blog posts, trying to decipher the best way to build backlinks, you often see many statements made stating ‘links are like votes of confidence”. Another is that backlinks are “the currency of the Internet”.

The reason why links in particular are described as votes is quite simple: if you gain powerful links from the right websites, it’s just like a vote. Just as a politician looks for votes to win power, a website seeks to gain powerful links to occupy the number one position on Google.

However, we have to return to our previous point and say that many businesses do not understand how to build links, even though link building, as a discipline, has been around for years.

Many businesses falsely believe that even in 2025, Google still uses its PageRank -it doesn’t the algorithm is now much more sophisticated.
The truth is that things have evolved; the Google algorithm has undergone significant improvements.

For quite a long while prior to Penguin update, businesses were been frustrated by their ranking, often appearing say fifth on the first page of Google, only to be surpassed by numerous competitors using spam, black-hat methods, and purchasing backlinks in bulk. This is why Google introduced the penguin update.

There can be nothing more frustrating than a company that is following the rules and Google Webmaster guidelines, only to be overtaken by a multitude of businesses that are buying spam backlinks.

However the Penguin update changed all this. Now spam links do not work, and will harm your companies marketing.

Enter the Google Penguin update.

This was a very significant change to Google’s algorithm. Basically, without going into great detail, Google Penguin update became an integral part of the algorithm. It was essentially a filter, a spam filter; website owners with good-quality links would be rewarded for their efforts.

On the other hand, businesses that didn’t white-hat methods would be penalised. What could actually happen is that the website vanishes into thin air, well not literally disappearing altogether, but still being de-indexed, which means it’s taken entirely out of Google results.

Are backlinks still important today?

As one of the most experienced SEO experts in this area, we can confidently say that, without a doubt, high-quality backlinks still make a significant difference. Even though we are entering a period of artificial intelligence, where it is likely to have a substantial impact on search engine results pages ranking, a business still needs backlinks to decipher whether it has authoritative backlinks or perhaps they have spammy backlinks.

Ahrefs ran an experiment in 2021, where the company deliberately disavowed backlinks assigned to specific pages. The results were conclusive, proving that organic traffic sharply dropped, which indicates that good-quality backlinks are necessary to improve your organic search engine optimisation.

Stood the test of time

The truth is that various marketing companies, such as ours, have spent a considerable amount of time writing updates, blog posts, and creating evergreen content marketing that offers various SEO advice.

For example, since Google’s PageRank reigns supreme right through today in 2025, your marketing businesses are writing endlessly about search engine optimisation in order to rank highly for marketing keywords.

However, some aspects of SEO have stood the test of time, including good quality content and good quality links.

Naturally, SEO is hard work; it’s massively time-consuming, and if you want the advice of some of the best minds working in SEO, the time can be expensive.

Therefore, businesses have naturally wanted to cut corners.

The point we are trying to make here is quite simple: businesses that follow Google Webmaster Guidelines, whether in 2009 or 2025, will rank well in organic search results if the work is done to a good standard.

Therefore, don’t cut corners, do white hat SEO.

Spam, link penalties, and websites being de-indexed

As a customer, might have shopped around various agencies in order to gain an understanding of different prices that SEO agencys can charge.

What you might have become aware of is that the prices can vary massively, in terms of what one agency charges compared to another in their monthly retainer.

And you might be scratching your head, thinking how these prices vary so much?

Although paying a lot for SEO is no guarantee that it will result in quality work, it can sometimes reveal that the agency needs to cover a significant portion of staff wages to do the job correctly.

If an agency is offering a very low price, which is totally out of whack with all the other quotes, you do have to ask the question on the cutting call: ‘Should we use them?’ Are you using black hat methods? Are you using spam link-building methods?

As you are now aware of the Google Penguin update, you will also be mindful that businesses can get de-indexed.

This means, therefore, that if Google detects that you are building a large number of spam links, the website will be removed entirely from Google’s index.

It can take a very long time to recover rankings; personal experience shows that websites can sometimes take years to recover where they once ranked if they get hit by a penalty.

So, although things might seem to be moving at a snail’s pace, if the agency doing things the right way, then it’s worth waiting for the results to be reaped at a later date.

The difference between do-follow and no-follow backlinks

You might have read various blog posts where authors discuss domain authority and how a website passes through something called “link juice”?

Now, this is where things can get a bit complicated, but please bear with us; we will keep things as simple as possible.

Different websites have different DA scores, which stands for “domain authority”.

This is not a score assigned to the website by Google, but rather a metric created by various SEO tools to indicate the website’s authority. It was first created by Moz we believe.

Therefore, it’s a score out of 100, based on the strength of companies’ backlinks.

Now that brings us nicely to the point about do-follow and no-follow backlinks.

Quite simply put, it’s only do-follow backlinks that will send the link equity, commonly referred to as link juice, through to a connected page.

Therefore, if a page has a lot of link equity flowing to it from websites with a very high domain authority score, this can raise the page’s authority.

As a result, the connected page, having many backlinks itself, can rank higher within Google’s organic results.

This is why businesses fight so fiercely to get high quality back links which have a high domain authority score.

Quite simply put, in our experience, as one of the most experienced SEO agencies in this area of Bristol, we would say that all websites ranking in the top three positions on Google will normally have strong backlink profiles.

How content marketing and link building work hand in glove

When you’re first setting up a business and trying to improve your search engine optimisation, you might think, ‘ Why am I spending an endless amount of hours writing blog posts? ‘

Single blog posts might take you over 10 hours to write and research.

Therefore, you might be scratching your head and asking, ‘Why should we give away so much free advice?’

The answer is simple: without good, well-written, and well-researched content marketing, the page stands no chance whatsoever of ranking on the first page of Google results.

Therefore, well-written content marketing is critical to the business’s search engine optimisation efforts.

The content marketing needs to have the following three qualities?
Be relevant.

Google needs to understand the products and services that you’re selling. What is your website relevant for? Are you a solicitors practice, what are you selling? Lawnmowers? Content marketing helps define your website’s terms of relevance, specifying the keywords for which you want to improve your websites relevancy for.

Helping the customer

Google would have absolutely no way of knowing dwell times, bounce rates, or how many pages have been viewed by the average customer on your company website, without publishing a lot of quality content marketing on your company website.

Content marketing, therefore, allows the search engines, such as Google, to understand how customers are engaging with your work. Are they interested in the work? If so, they are likely to spend a considerable amount of time on the page, which positively impacts the dwell time.

Suppose the shopper is disinterested and immediately recognises that the page is of no use to them.

In that case, the bounce rate will likely be extremely high, which can negatively impact the business’s organic search engine optimisation. If you have a sustained high bounce rate this can damage your SEO efforts.

Customer engagement is, therefore, a critical metric that Google analyses.

Link-worthy content

Another reason why businesses’ content marketing needs to be top-notch is that it gives a reason for other companies not to want to link to you.

Let’s say, for example, that you manufacture high-quality running trainers.

Lets say a business conducts in-depth market research, which details, for instance, how many runners have developed foot injuries because they have bought the wrong footwear that is ill-fitting.

This market research could be cited by many e-commerce businesses that sell and running trainers. Some may want to link back to recent findings because they found it very interesting read.

They may want to highlight the research to show to their own customers why they need trainers to be properly fitted and calibrated to their feet.

Therefore as you can see content marketing serves many different purposes.

If the content marketing is of good quality, then it can serve as link-worthy content, meaning that you can obtain backlinks without even asking anybody to link to your business.

Link velocity and why it’s important to take things slow

As a director of the business, you may be frustrated and somewhat annoyed that your appointed search engine optimisation company is not delivering results quickly enough.

Now, this could become a problem because the methods they are using are could be ineffective?

However, it’s perfectly possible that doing things the right way, yet, it’s taking longer than you have anticipated.

The thing is with search engine optimisation, everything has to be done properly. Listen carefully.

This means copywriters need to research carefully and consider the type of original content marketing they are writing.

You also have to think about “link velocity”; you don’t want to build a ton of spam links too fast.

If you build backlinks too quickly, these links can get indexed in quick succession by Google, which can then raise eyebrows. The algorithm starts to think that you could be buying links? Are you engaging in spammy link-building methods?

Therefore, you need to build links slowly, think about link velocity, and build links with a slow pace.

Toxic backlinks, we often say that we live in a world where more is perceived as better.

Those who might think that a large plate of food is better than having a smaller plate, as it’s perceived that the bigger plate offers better value for money.

However, sitting down with a nutritionist, they will tell you it’s better to have small plates with more nutritious and fresh ingredients on the plate than a mass of chips!

Think of this concept when you’re engaging in link building; you don’t want a massive number of backlinks if they’re of poor quality.

They have two adverse effects on the backlinks.

If they are run-of-the-mill backlinks, they could dilute your backlink profile, ultimately not helping you and not causing any significant problems, except perhaps diluting the effectiveness of more valuable backlinks.

Many toxic backlinks need to be avoided like the plague.

Too many of these toxic links on your website and you’re going to get a big fat Google penalty, which can mean your website disappears into the fresh air on Google. By that we mean de-indexed.

Is it all about backlinks?

The answer to that question is no, for search engine optimisation to be highly effective, helping to draw in more customers for you need to take a rounded marketing strategy.

The central pillars are technical SEO, content marketing and link building. However, there are over 200 various ranking factors that Google uses to assess and calculate the strength of your business’s search engine optimisation.

This is why SEO agencies are always in demand; they must continually strengthen these various ranking factors. It’s like spinning plates – as soon as they focus on one area, they need to go back and start working on the other regions, strengthening them.

FAQ regarding backlinks:

Will artificial intelligence replace the need for building backlinks?

In our view, artificial intelligence is often massively misunderstood. A lot of it’s based on large language models (LLM’s), which is simply similar to how the algorithms works now. For example, Google’s bot reads the Internet by “crawling and indexing” links.

Then, Google possesses the knowledge to have an in-depth understanding of entities via Google Knowledge Vault.

This is similar to how artificial intelligence works; it reads most of the Internet.

Then, using large language models, it possesses massive amounts of knowledge that it can answer any question you ask of it.

However, there will always be a need to determine which businesses are more authoritative, which pages are more important, and therefore, which are more trusted in terms of the information they offer.

Therefore, we believe that backlink building is here to stay; it’s a surefire way of discerning which pages are of high quality and which ones are not.

How does our digital marketing agency nestled in the city of Bristol build backlinks?

We like to build backlinks in two different ways: through competitor backlink analysis, as well as earning backlinks.

The most effective way to build links is through high-quality content marketing. Therefore, what should happen then is that other businesses should want to link to you on their own accord, because they believe the information is of high quality and will be of interest to their readers.

Competitor backlink research involves using various backlink research tools. You can then obtain a comprehensive list of your direct competitors’ backlinks.

The purpose here is to replicate links; it’s similar to creating the same links leading to your website to enhance your business’s backlink profile.

Why choose our agency in Bristol?
Quite simply put, just as you would want to employ a highly experienced tradesperson, we are one of the most highly experienced SEO agencies operating in Bristol.
With over 10 years of experience, we know which SEO methods are effective and which ones are not.
Monthly retainer staff for just £ 1,000 PCM. Do contact us today for further information.
Meta title
Is backlink building still important? And how should we do it?
There is considerable confusion surrounding the notion that AI will replace the need to build links. We explain why link building remains essential, even in the era of artificial intelligence.

Link Building to Improve Your SEO: A Beginner’s Guide

For over 10 years, we’ve been diligently working to help businesses improve their search engine optimisation. This article will focus on link building, which is a cornerstone of any business’s organic or local SEO. In the business world, regardless of the size of the company, you will often need to build high-quality links (do-follow and no-follow).

This guide will therefore walk you through the process and provide our expert knowledge in a clear and easy-to-understand way.
Shoppers and new businesses will often choose to link to your company because you might rank high on Google. Perhaps even you rank number 1.

Therefore, often you will be regarded by customers as the best at what you do.

However, what many businesses will realise is that once you have got your business onto the first page of Google, you will often need to be a very busy bee building backlinks.

Experienced link builders

We’ve been helping businesses for over 10 years, enabling them to generate more sales through search engine optimisation. Now, one of the time-consuming aspects is improving a business’s SEO to build backlinks. It can, in our experience, consume a significant portion of a client’s marketing budget, as it’s one of the most time-consuming aspects of improving a business’s SEO.

However, neglecting this aspect of improving your SEO often means that your company will not rank at the top.

Therefore, link building is something that must be done; however, it must be done to a high standard.

Our table of contents

• The basics of link building
• How can we build quality and authoritative company backlinks
• Which backlinks make a difference to a business’s search engine optimisation
• Why it’s essential to have a link-building strategy in place
• What are some of the best link-building tools that you use (we highly recommend Moz Pro)
• Why do many people hire Digital Tailors in South West England

The basics of link building

We understand that you may not fully understand how Google’s algorithm works.

Some of the most skilled marketing companies globally do not precisely understand how Google’s algorithm works. The reason is that the exact inner workings of Google’s algorithm are a closely guarded secret.

However, what might make it easier to understand is that Google uses an algorithm that is constantly being perfected, improved, and worked on to make it better. Therefore, the point we are trying to make here is simple: focus on quality. When enhancing your business’s SEO, always focus on quality.

For example, consider a retro computer games console for a moment. In your day, the Nintendo 64 was the bees’ knees. Fast-forward to today, and the gaming console is more powerful and significantly improved.

This is the same when it comes to Google’s algorithm.

Back in the day, we had Google PageRank; however, now, in 2025, we are starting to see AI being used to sort the results, just as gaming consoles have evolved, so has Google’s algorithm.

Back in the day, Google’s PageRank algorithm was a very early iteration of Google’s algorithm; it was like the Nintendo 64 – in its time.

However, the algorithm has evolved in terms of its operation.

To understand the importance of link building, we must revisit the early days, specifically the introduction of PageRank. In layperson’s terms, what happened then was that other websites linking to your company website were seen as a “vote of confidence”. A link was, therefore, like a thumbs-up, approval of your business; the more you obtained, the higher your business ranked.

Therefore, the more links you obtain, the more powerful your website is in terms of SEO.

However, many businesses attempted to manipulate SEO by purchasing links and spam links for as little as a few pounds.

Therefore, the algorithm could be somewhat manipulated; thus, Google requires a clampdown on businesses using spam, low-quality and purchased links.

This is when Google rolled out the Almighty Google Penguin algorithm update. Many businesses have disappeared overnight from Google because they have built spammy links.

The reason businesses would receive a link penalty is if they participated in purchasing low-quality links; they would then incur an algorithm penalty or a manual penalty from Google.

Why are backlinks an essential part of the SEO process?

First of all, you have to put yourself into Google’s shoes for a second

Google is presented with millions of new pages published every day, which have to be crawled and indexed.

Businesses globally are publishing content marketing at a rapid rate.

For the survival of some businesses, they must rank at the top of search engines like Google or Bing. Therefore, companies often have to produce and publish a large amount of content marketing.

Therefore, the company may have a dedicated team of content marketing writers, also known as copywriters, who produce content daily.

Businesses understand that they need to publish content marketing if they want to improve their Google rankings.

An essential aspect to remember is that good-quality content marketing can help you obtain good-quality backlinks.
Google’s algorithm works by taking into account various ranking factors.

Sometimes these are also referred to as Google ranking signals. Now, what is regarded as one of the primary ways Google uses to determine the quality of a business’s organic SEO is calculating the actual strength of a business’s backlinks.

Let’s summarise this neatly in one single paragraph: if your website has a long list of high-quality backlinks linking to you, you are most likely to rank on the first page of Google.

Businesses that have purchased rubbish links, links bought for a few quid, are likely to languish on page 10 of Google or worse, receive a Google Penguin link penalty.

Okay, enough of the suspense, how to go about building back?

You may read several articles that discuss how to improve your website’s authority and why it’s essential to review the authority of your company website. For example, a company’s backlink strength is calculated using a DA or “domain authority” score.

The reason is simple: a website, a business that has backlinks from respected other businesses, gains more authority.

Therefore, if a website has a high volume of quality links, it will likely have a high DA score.

But, hold your horses, don’t even though the back link is!

This explains clearly what backlinks are:

A link is simply a connection (a link) from one website to another; when you click on some text, called the “anchor text”, you are transported to the other website- this is called following a link.

The reason links are added is pretty straightforward: businesses often collaborate closely with other companies, such as suppliers. Therefore, if you make a product that includes a quality part or component, you may link to that supplier’s website.

For example, when you’re about to go on holiday, you book your flights on an airline’s website. Y
Once you finish making your booking, the website asks, ‘Would you also like to hire a car?’

They click the anchor text that says ‘Hire a Car’ and are directed to a local car hire company in the destination country.

This link is offered to help the customer, as they can now book a car much more simply after booking their flight on the airline’s website.
And therefore, the car hire website benefits from the incoming link because the airline has linked to it. Thus, when link building is done right, in a “white hat” way, it can help both the customer and the business’s SEO.

How do you go about building backlinks?

There are many ways to build links; you could choose to add a link, ask for a link, or request a backlink.

Here’s a snapshot of how you can build links; however, we would only recommend “earning links”.

You can build links in the following ways:

– Buying links
– Earning links
– Completing broken link building
– PR
– Outreach

What’s the hardest way to obtain a back?

We would say that the most challenging part is earning a backlink, but really, earning backlinks is the best way to obtain them.

Why was this so? Why do you only recommend earning backlinks?

The answer is quite simple; other methods of link building could be viewed as spam. It could be considered that you purchased the links, which is frowned upon. This could attract a Google penalty, and it could damage your search engine optimisation because it may be perceived as an attempt to manipulate your SEO by buying backlinks.

However, what you want to do is to link.

For example, suppose your business offers an excellent piece of content marketing that is both helpful and enables customers to solve a problem. In that case, you are likely to get linked to by other businesses.

The content marketing could range from how-to guides related to car repair to topics involving offering legal advice.

Other companies might want to choose the link because you have conducted market research; for example, you might have cited statistics that the company found interesting and related to their blog posts, so they cited your business as a source of those statistics.

There’s also a wide range of reasons why others want to link to your business.

This, therefore, involves writing content marketing, which is of excellent quality, just like the article that you are reading here.

Business directory links

It can be beneficial, especially if your focus is on improving your business’s local search engine optimisation to build some local backlinks.

These are often referred to as business directory links, and they can be easily obtained from sources such as the Yellow Pages.

However, we recommend building business citations, just enough to reinforce your company’s name, address and phone number. The number of citations you have, for example, NAP links from sources like Thomson Local, will help reinforce your company’s name, address, and phone number. Again, you need a considerable number of this type of link and NAP citations.

Outreach and asking for links

This often involves a lot of emails and perhaps phone conversations with other websites which are related to the website. For example, it could be a blog you have written about a particular brand of car, and how to change the oil of that car.

You might be a manufacturer of high-performance oil filters.

You might write a rather comprehensive article explaining how to change oil filters for a particular range of cars. Then you could write a high-quality piece of content marketing, which could be well-placed on another company’s website. Because you’re helping other businesses, readers and customers of our company will be interested in what you have to say as you dispense your knowledge about oil filters and related products.

Therefore, in return for your efforts in writing a detailed piece of content marketing on how to change the oil in their car, you can request a do-follow backlink from the publisher.

This is what is called a win-win situation; you’ve offered a high-quality piece of content marketing that the other company knows its audience will want to read.

Your efforts in writing, spanning approximately 2000 words, in dispensing your knowledge, you can then ask for a link back to, say, the homepage of your website.

What does link prospecting mean?

If you were to join an SEO agency as part of the team, they would likely have one or more link builders working for them. Because link building is such a critical part of the search engine optimisation process, as part of a large marketing agency, there will be a team of link builders.

However, their job is to analyse competitors’ backlink profiles, which can sometimes contain many thousands of links that they need to review line by line diligently, using, for example, Ahrefs’ backlink checking tool.

This is hard and tedious work because not all of those backlinks can be replicated.

However, some of them can be replicated, which means that they can contact those businesses with the ambition and aim of building a similar backing for their clients or the marketing company’s website. The purpose of this work is, therefore, simple: competitors are ranking higher than them because they have better backlinks; consequently, you can try to replicate some of those links.

It’s then simply a matter of seeing if you can replicate those links and whether you can also obtain high-quality links for your client, with the ambition of thereby ranking higher.

What is the skyscraper technique?

We think that this method is often overhyped in SEO and could lead to a possible waste of your time if you were to pursue it.

Essentially, the skyscraper link-building technique is defined as a page with numerous backlinks. However, the content marketing might have become outdated and stale, therefore offering obsolete advice.

Then, this technique dictates that you need to create a better piece of content marketing.

Then, after you have published a better article, you can contact all the websites that are linking to the other piece of content marketing and say, ‘Look at this; isn’t it better?’ Why don’t you link to me instead?

We believe that this technique is likely to fall on deaf ears, as businesses often don’t want to link to other companies solely because they have received an email telling them to do so.

What is far better is to link to or participate in outreach when a business wants a particular topic or subject covered.

Broken link building

Again, we believe this is another link-building method that is slightly overhyped and likely won’t yield the results that warrant investing a lot of time into it.

This method essentially means finding a page that receives a large number of links, but the page is no longer online, possibly due to a page error.

This, therefore, means that the link is broken because a piece of content marketing has been removed.

Therefore, the suggestion is that you then contact the company and ask them to link to your page, because the other link is broken.

We would place too much time and effort into this type of link building; for us, it is time-intensive compared to the benefits that it could potentially bring.

HARO and journalist requests –

Just as a journalist is doing a live broadcast, they often want to bring in an expert for their opinion live on air.
This is also true for content marketing, where, in exchange for your contributions to the article, you can often request a backlink in return.

Unlinked mention

Now, in our opinion, this is a compelling way to build backlinks.

Often scattered throughout the Internet, there will be many mentions of your brand and your company name.

Therefore, this presents an opportunity for you to contact those businesses and request that the brand mention be converted into a link back to your company website.

This gives you an example, let’s say that you run a restaurant and you were awarded a particularly prestigious award for your food.

Then, once you have been awarded this award, you can look at which bloggers and other companies have mentioned the Gold award you have won.

Then ask those companies to offer a link back to your website.

Should we purchase backlinks?

So, there’s an unequivocal answer to that question: you shouldn’t purchase backlinks.

The only reason businesses purchase a link or links is to try to fool Google’s algorithm, attempting to deceive Google’s algorithm into thinking that your search engine optimisation is stronger than it is

Therefore, businesses might try to cut corners and purchase backlinks.

You might think that’s a good idea, trying to buy, say, a hundred links, which might seem like a good idea, but it’s not.

However, buying links can cause a Google algorithmic penalty, which means that, in the flick of a switch, your website disappears from Google.

The reason this happens is simple: Google knows the websites that are selling links, often referred to as “link farms”.

Therefore, if you have a large number of links pointing to your website that originate from these link farms, which charge for links, it’s apparent that you have engaged in spam and low-quality link building.

This, therefore, means that if you have a lot of spammy links, your website will be removed from Google.

This is because a link penalty could have been applied to your website.

Why do you advocate for earning links as the best way of obtaining backlinks?

If you create quality content marketing, it can work for your business in two different ways.

Content marketing helps to make a website relevant.
For example, if you are writing content marketing about, say, “motorbikes,” you are already making your website relevant for relevant keywords about motorbikes.

There are also second benefits to this work, which, if helpful blog posts, helps people solve a problem. This can help a company accumulate backlinks.

What you often have to appreciate is that businesses that rank in the first position on Google may have a relatively high number of backlinks.

For example, it’s not uncommon for an excellent page to have over 1000 backlinks; therefore, this needs to be understood if you’re trying to rank higher than the current page on Google. The reason is quite simple: if you want to rank higher than that business on page one, you need better backlinks.

If you are competing with a page that has 1000 quality links, then it will be very hard to overtake that page.

Therefore, you do have to pick your fights

What is meant by that is that the competition has powerful backlinks; you have to be serious about whether you can compete with them.
With search engine optimisation, you have to be mindful of your time.

Which backlinks can genuinely make a significant impact?

Different types of backlinks will affect businesses’ search optimisation differently.

For example, a single back link from the BBC News could jump you up seven pages on Google.

Let us provide you with another example: suppose you run a solicitors’ practice, and there is a widely respected news website that thousands of solicitors in the United Kingdom enjoy reading and gaining news from. This is therefore a primary source for news in your particular industry.

Now, one single link from a website like that can often have a dramatic impact on a business’s organic search engine optimisation.
However, finding such links is akin to finding a needle in a haystack and is a challenging task.

Google E-EAT

If you’re thinking about starting work on improving your business’s search engine optimisation, you must begin by reading about Google’s E-EAT update. This stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Essentially, this is what Google quality evaluators are looking for when assessing the quality of businesses’ search optimisation.
How authoritative is your website?
The primary way to enhance a business’s authority is to gain backlinks. As we mentioned right at the start of this article, backlinks are still widely regarded as one of the most important ranking signals.

How do backlink tools calculate the value of a link?

Backlink building tools such as Ahrefs are used to measure a link’s domain rating (DR) or domain authority (DA).

Anchor text

For those unfamiliar with anchor text, it is simply the clickable text that follows a link. Now the anchor text is branded, for example, it could just mention your company name.

It can also be anchor text, which says ‘click here’.

Yet the anchor text can also be written descriptively; for example, it might mention Nike running trainers.

The descriptive anchor text indicates to search engines what the link is for.

However, just like building spam links, you can also damage your company’s SEO by over-optimising the anchor text, which can result in a link penalty in itself.

For example, your business often needs to rank highly on Google for, say, one main keyword.
Therefore, if you mention that keyword in the hundreds of anchor texts, this will result in a link penalty.

Placement of the link

Bill Slawski stated in 2010, after studying a Google patent, that the patent essentially explains the likelihood of a particular link being clicked on. For example, a link that’s more likely to be clicked on will often transfer more link authority. Therefore, the location of the link on the page determines its importance.

For example, if your link is positioned high on the page and in a main paragraph, it will pass more link equity.

However, links in the footer are generally considered less effective; therefore, a link that is prominently placed in the opening paragraph is likely to be clicked on more, receive more attention from readers, and thus is expected to pass and transfer authority to the linking page.

Competitor backlink research is essential for any article on backlink building, as it would be incomplete without discussing competitor backlink research.

We briefly discussed this earlier, but it is worth examining in more depth now.

Most marketing agencies find that the most effective way to build brand backlinks for a business is to conduct competitor backlink research.

This means identifying your main competitors and then examining their backlink profile to determine where they have obtained their links from.

SEO agencies globally utilise this method to build backlinks for their clients.

It can be very effective, the reason being that it identifies already established websites that are on the first page of Google; therefore, simply replicating those links can significantly boost your business SEO

Visit one of the top Bristol SEO agencies.

If your business is located in the South West, contact us. We are the SEO experts in Bristol.

A quick guide on how your business can improve its technical SEO.

What exactly is Technical SEO?

A core component of technical SEO is simply ensuring your website is indexed.

Helping your website to get indexed can significantly improve your search rankings. For example, there could be a problem with the indexation of the main page. Once this has been identified and resolved, that page can then appear in the index.

Why is Technical SEO so Important?

You might spend an entire day improving the on-page SEO for main pages, such as the homepage. However, if the page can’t get crawled and indexed, it will never appear in search engine results.

This is why technical SEO is so important. Good-quality marketing tools, such as Screaming Frog, can help detect indexation problems. Once these issues are fixed, you can request search engines to crawl and index that page. Appearing in the index can therefore increase the number of organic visitors to your website.

Fast Load Time

Another important aspect of technical SEO, whether you run an e-commerce business or a service-sector business, is ensuring your website is as fast as possible.

UX designers and technical SEO consultants should work together to improve the speed of your company website. Even shaving milliseconds off your company’s website load time can significantly help improve your organic rankings.

Just as boats rise as water comes into a harbour, making your website faster across all main pages and blog posts can help improve your business’s organic search engine optimisation.

Internal Linking

Are you making good use of internal links?

You should add internal links to main pages and blog posts, as this can help shoppers and also bots find pages more easily.

For example, let’s say you’re selling a product such as electric bikes. Somebody might want to buy a new bike saddle at the same time. Therefore, you should add an internal link using anchor text like “bike saddle.” By doing this, you effectively add internal links to your website.

Search engines use links as a way to navigate the web, crawling and indexing pages. Additionally, powerful backlinks leading to your website can transfer link equity to other pages through internal links.

Therefore, ensure you use internal links effectively, which also means writing anchor text in a white-hat way.

Sitemaps

Do you have a sitemap?

For those who don’t know what a sitemap is, it’s simply an up-to-date list of all pages and blog posts on your company website. Often referred to as an XML sitemap, this list of pages and blog posts usually has its own URL extension.

This allows bots to crawl and index the sitemap. It’s like giving bots satnav directions to the pages that need to be crawled and indexed.

Without a sitemap, bots might not find and index all pages. For example, orphan pages—pages without internal links—might not be crawled and indexed by bots. A sitemap ensures all pages and blog posts on your website get indexed.

Breadcrumb Navigation

Have you added breadcrumb navigation?

This is about creating a better user experience. For instance, have you ever shopped for products on an e-commerce website with thousands of products?

It can often feel like you’re going around in circles, looking at a product you might have seen before. To improve user experience, you should make it as simple as possible for users to navigate your website so they can browse the different products and services you offer.

For example, someone looking at bathtubs might want to return to copper bathtubs. Having breadcrumb navigation allows them to know exactly which section of the website they’re on, and easily navigate back to previous product sections.

Therefore, breadcrumb navigation makes navigating your company website simpler.

Conclusion

Are you looking for the best SEO agencies around?

We simply know our stuff. We only implement white-hat SEO and provide top-quality technical SEO. We have encountered content management systems that have indexation problems and were able to resolve them effectively. Many agencies concentrate solely on links and content, overlooking technical aspects like indexation, which can cause major SEO issues as highlighted in this article. For example, what’s the use of a 3000-word article if it can’t get indexed?

Our team wants to solve any technical SEO problems you might have.

We offer local and national SEO fixed-price packages starting at just a thousand pounds per month, making them affordable for small and medium businesses. We take care of improving all aspects of your business’s organic search engine optimisation, including link building, content marketing, and improving technical SEO.

If you’d like a quote, please contact us today.